In the present disclosure, where a document, an act and/or an item of knowledge is referred to and/or discussed, then such reference and/or discussion is not an admission that the document, the act and/or the item of knowledge and/or any combination thereof was at the priority date, publicly available, known to the public, part of common general knowledge and/or otherwise constitutes prior art under the applicable statutory provisions; and/or is known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which the present disclosure is concerned with. Further, nothing is disclaimed.
Language underlies much of human mental and communicative functioning. Consequently, a disorder which hampers a part of language performance can carry broad or significant detrimental effects. Some prevalent examples of such disorder comprise a language-related disorder such as dyslexia, specific language impairment (SLI), auditory processing disorder (APD), aphasia, or others. For instance, although dyslexia is commonly considered a reading disorder, individuals with such condition often experience a host of other difficulties as well. Among such difficulties are problems with speech articulation, attention, or memory. Accordingly, some of such individuals can often struggle in school, especially at great personal cost, since dyslexia affects many basic language and cognitive functions. Others often drop out of school and suffer self-esteem or other psycho-social problems. However, despite pervasiveness of such language disorders, a large number of professionals, such as teachers or therapists, are not trained accordingly.
Such problematic state of being is further compounded by a fact that some language-related disorders, such as dyslexia, cover a broad spectrum of deficits. Resultantly, whether such disorders are even useful as a construct for research and evaluation remains questionable. Furthermore, many existing diagnostic tests for language-related disorders are not designed for administration to large groups, while allowing for self-pacing and customization according to each individual user's deficit(s). Worse, many providers simply stop at diagnosis and do not proceed to recommend therapy to address even most of the deficits found based on the diagnosis. At best, some providers, who do link therapy to diagnosis, use evaluation results to select preset therapy modules intended for all users performing at a certain level of competency.
Although intervention can be useful in treating such disorders, at present, a state of intervention therapy for reading disability is discouraging. For example, some reading disability interventions in middle schools have yielded disappointing results. Furthermore, some popular methodologies of reading instruction, such as Orton-Gillingham approach or Orton-Gillingham-based approaches, have not produced sufficient scientific evidence of efficacy in part or in whole.